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Category Archives: Life

Sometimes, I stop and reflect on life. Actually, I probably reflect on life a little bit more than I need to. This morning I was reflecting on the new cat next door. I say new because it’s only been there for a few months. The “old” cat, who we had named Kitty, had been there had been there for several years. My neighbor, John, and I discussed what we thought happened to Kitty. We believed that he succumbed to the fate that that befalls all of us if we don’t perish in an accident or by violence – some form of disease overtakes us or our body simply wears out. It’s a very temporal world we find ourselves in. Change is inevitable. It’s the one constant I can count on. Continue reading →

Okay, I admit it. I’ve been reading too much and I came across some statements that I simply found difficult to believe. So I go to the CDC website and find the latest statistics (2013) on Causes of Death. It seems that there were 821.5 deaths for every 100,000 people in this country during the latest year on record. Of those, 185 were from malignant neoplasms, 252 were from major cardiovascular diseases, 24 from diabetes, 2 from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), 27 from Alzheimer’s disease, 18 from influenza and pneumonia, 47 from chronic lower respiratory diseases, 101 from all other diseases, 41 from accidents and 13 from intentional self-harm (suicide). It seems that almost 15 people per 100,000 die from drug-induced causes and a little over 9 die from alcohol-induced reasons. At his juncture you might be wondering why I made a point of citing these numbers. It’s because I read that a person in America is much more likely to die from taking their own life or partying than from violence. It seems that the CDC found that only 1.6 people per 100,000 people in America die from assault (homicide). You don’t have to take my word for it. Simply Google “death statistics 2013″ and look for cdc.gov to find the data. To put it mildly, I was amazed. I looked through all that data, did a little pondering, and wondered how 10 times as many people could take their own life as opposed to people committing all the violence I hear about and in the end I was totally clueless about it. Then I realized that the odds were that I was 15 times as likely to have died from partying than from someone trying to kill me. After I thought about that for a while I really only had one question – I wondered “Is the Red Dog is still in operation?”

So what am I currently reading? Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. At Amazon it got 4.5/5 stars with 1,068 customer reviews and was their Amazon Best Book of the Month for February 2015. What do I think? I love it. But, not everyone will. The isn’t very patronizing to people who have very serious religious, poitical, economic, or social beliefs, implying that the existence of such constructs is simply an expedient way for larger and larger social communities to be able to function effectively. What do I think? I think it’s a very entertaining read and it’s probably good if you can get preople to question and ponder their perceptions of the world. Will my children read it? Nah. Their minds are far too imaginative and creative for the non-fiction crap that I read.

It’s totally embarrassing how long it took me to figure out why my daughter posted this picture on FaceBook. While I’ve never owned a gun and probably never will I sleep better at night knowing that the potential threat of action from 99% of the possessors of guns in our population – the “good guys” – keep the threat of the actions from the 1% of the population who are “bad guys” at bay. Give me a choice between a veteran with an automatic weapon and a criminal with one and I’ll take the veteran every time. Tell me we need to take all guns off the street and I’ll tell you that you’re more than a little naive. You’re bordering on really, really stupid. While I’ve never felt the need to own a gun, I do hope the “good guys” never give theirs up and that my government, as misguided as it is, never falls prey to the argument made by the misguided dupes of the bad guys that people don’t kill people – guns do. Ban all weapons and the bad guys will laugh all the way to the stash house after they take your money at gunpoint.